Spoleto Festival 2010

By Tyler Marshall

Spoleto Festival 2010

The Spoleto Festival was founded in 1977 by Pulitzer Prize-winning Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti, Christopher Keene, and others who sought to create an American counterpart to their annual Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.

Looking for a city that would provide the charm of Spoleto as well as its wealth of theatres, churches and other performance spaces, the founders selected Charleston as the ideal location. The historic city provided a perfect fit; it was intimate enough that the Festival would captivate the entire city, yet cosmopolitan enough to provide an enthusiastic audience and robust infrastructure.

In the decades since its inception, the Spoleto Festival has firmly established itself as one of the world’s leading festivals, presenting more than 200 world or American premieres, notably Monkey: Journey to the West by Chen Shi-Zheng, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett; Peter and Wendy by Lee Breuer and The American Clock by Arthur Miller alongside a host of other cultural delights and productions.

This year’s festival had a number of milestones to distinguish itself as one of the best Spoleto Festivals with the newly spruced-up Dock Street Theatre, with eighteen million dollars spent on renovation whilst Geoff Nuttall proved himself worthy of his director for chamber music title after Charles Wadsworth passed him the baton last year.

Music and dance were features of this year's program with classical music as the backbone of the festival, with 11 Chamber Music concerts, a superlative orchestra, and the Westminster Choir.

Dance was also well represented, with Giselle, I Can See Myself in Your Pupil, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Oyster, and Lucinda Childs' Dance all celebrating the form in different ways. Other forms of art got less attention, but this didn’t diminish audience numbers.

The quality of each production was strong enough to keep art fans happy. Flora, the main operatic offering, had appealing characters, elements of familiar music, and a large-scale set. Flora was the first ballad opera to be held in the Dock Street Theater in 1736.

Giselle was a solid example of traditional ballet. Present Laughter, the Noël Coward play performed by Dublin's Gate Theatre, hit all the right farcical notes. They were the kind of shows that tour groups could be wheeled into for a satisfying experience.

Visual arts are an understandably low priority for Spoleto, but nevertheless JoAnn Verburg provided examples of here photographic excellence alongside Nick Cave's Soundsuits.

Artists on Fire, a Spoelto feature founded by Alex and Sara Radin, gives unusual artists an opportunity to be recognized. “Our goal is to inspire people to dream, to see the beauty that is around them and to be a voice of hope, truth and life in this world,” said Alex Radin.

The visual arts were accompanied by 20 musicians playing original compositions as ell as 15 live art performers.

Menotti wanted his festival to immerse the entire community, not just those with cash. Spoleto's collaborations with the Gibbes Museum and the Halsey Institute offered access to people who couldn't afford the high-dollar shows.

Previous visitors still talk about installations like Places with a Past and Evoking History, which have touched an array of visitors from varying backgrounds.

This years festival was widely covered by the press, with The New York Times covering Maestro Emmanuel Villaume's resignation and the Dock Street reopening, and a review of Philemon & Baucis. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reviewed three operas: Flora, Proserpina, and Philemon.

Charlotte's Creative Loafing critic Perry Tannenbaum found the Dock Street "comfy," but said that some of the Present Laughter performers were hard to hear. Columbia's Free Times gave the most accurate coverage — Flora was a "delightful trifle," Lucinda Childs' Dance felt like "a museum piece," and Die Roten Punkte was "a poor man's Hedwig and the Angry Inch."

However, for the ordinary festival attendee, the events cemented Charleston's reputation as a staid historic destination, just as the organizers intended. Nostalgia's a great draw when times are tough and the futures uncertain, with The Post & Courier approaching the whole festival from a positive angle, finding most shows splendid.

Members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra played enchanting music at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, with numerous reviews congratulating them on their exquisite performance. The Intermezzi were stirring and popular enough to warrant performances in other, secular venues.

The College of Charleston's Sottile Theatre has been underutilized in recent years, but not in 2010. In a recent interview, Spolto USA's general director Nigel Redden said that his team was talking to CofC about improving the Sottile. Although improvements would surely be welcome, the venue has proved itself capable of hosting big productions like Faustus and Monkey without any overhaul.

Middleton Place spent a week preparing for the finale and 12 hours making sure 3,000 people got in and out of the place without a scratch. 3,000 people filled the lawn and enjoyed a traditional fireworks show along with the music of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

The staff and volunteers' commitment to the arts makes an indelible impression on the city, their work contributing to a festival essential to both Charleston and the international arts scene. Without them, Spoleto would not have seen a 22 percent increase in box office revenues from the previous year or surpassed its ticket sales goal. This year Spoleto USA sold 70,000 tickets to 45 events spread over 17 days.

Tickets for the 2011 Spoleto USA Festival , running May 27 through June 12, will be on sale starting in January.